Southampton

April 19th
Southampton

Today was my first full day sitting in England with nothing to do, so John and I have been trying to think of how to pass our days. The morning was started by going into the city for internet access, followed by a quick lunch bought from a grocery store. We had found a jazz saxophone concert listing in a brochure that was scheduled to take place at the University of Southampton, which after being told it was about 2 miles away, we decided to walk there. We set out around noon and after a lot of wandering around the campus, we arrived at the concert hall at 1:00, just in time for the start.
It was a free concert that the university was putting on, but it was supposed to feature an American saxophonist, someone who’s in the opposite problem of mine: he couldn’t fly to England. Instead, we listened to the saxophone professor do the concert instead, which was still very good. That lasted about an hour, after which we decided to wander through the music school. This culminated in us wandering into a saxophone class with the same rhythm section that we’d just seen at the concert, and we sat in on the lesson, listening to the students go up one at a time to play with the guest artists. We were thus able to kill another 90 minutes of our day, and followed by the walk back to the hotel, it was now almost time for dinner. Dinner was followed by going to a pub that we knew had free internet, and being the only place open at night and the best time to get in contact with the states, we stayed there till about 11:00 before making our way back to the hotel.
And with that, we’ve successfully killed our first day here. Tomorrow is going to be a little harder, and we’re debating a trip to London, but we’ll see where the day takes us. Thanks for reading and I hope to be able to stop writing this blog soon!!!!! Seeya!